The Wolf House is not a film you see in a movie theater. Nor do you see it with your friends and family. Films like this require intimate viewing where nothing possibly can distract you. Before I go on about it, here are some overview—

_{© Screenshot from the film}

In a secluded village of southern chile, there lived a colony of apiculturists (beekeepers). A beautiful young woman named Maria lived with them. But she’s not much of a busy bee and spends her time doing trivial things, never caring for serious beekeeping business. One day she let a few pigs run away. The community shuns her, hoping to teach her a lesson for her negligence. Maria, not wanting to be subjugated to communal laws and order, runs away to the jungle. But who's going to save her from the big bad wolf that lurks within the woods? She finds a strange house in the middle of the jungle and seeks shelter in it.

"Hello?" she whispers. "Anybody there?"

No answer comes her way. And as a viewer, I see the house morphing into a living shapes, shades, and ideas. The house somehow takes over Maria and her entire being. And then a number of preternatural events follow. It gets so much complex visually that at first, I had myself dumbfounded and had to retract my steps a few times. Every single frame in the film is achieved in a stop-motion technique and it is superbly done! Masterful work indeed!

The stop motion technique is quite a hard-boiled approach in animation. An artist has to move an object slightly and take a photo afterward. Move the object again and take a photo again. Repeat this over and over and all the photos, when played one after another—give off an impression of an animated clip. The process is nothing new and painstakingly slow but when done right, it can be amazing to look at. It also has a certain charm you can't find elsewhere. I gotta give this to the animators who are also directors of the film, they knew what they were doing quite well. Precise in their ideas and extremely detailed in artistic decisions. I wonder how many hundreds—no—thousands of hours went into this.

Maria finds a couple of pigs in the house and she decides to take care of them. She named them Pedro and Ana. Little pigs slowly started to take human shapes.

The peaceful home of the trio isn't going to last forever as the wolf is ever vigilant, ever watchful. As the sun comes and goes, so they grow restless. How will they cope with hunger and the ever-changing house itself? How will they save themselves from the wolf outside?

The film is hauntingly beautiful. Some of the progression is straight out of horror movies but I couldn't feel scared as I was more into admiring the art style and beautiful handicrafts.

The story is not overwhelming or anything especial but that hardly matters. A good story itself doesn't make a cinema. How it is told is all that matters. This is where cinema truly shines as an art form. After all, it is visual by nature. The rest comes later.

I haven't seen anything by this duo and watching this one, I will certainly look out for any future projects they might do. If you want to see this, you can find it on MUBI.

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